Lost Signs for Sanity
by SevenOptimistics
Summary: Trolls are being murdered one by one, partially eaten and Dave, now a detective, along with his cohorts want to find out who is sick enough to do it. But what happens when all evidence points to the most unsuspecting person they could have imagined? / Slight DaveJohn, AU Timeline, Gore


Optimistics: So this is actually an AU fanfic I started about 4(?) years back but never finished on another site. Thinking back now it was bad enough that I need to revamp it and start all over again.

Seven: Because Opt switches out of fandoms too quickly for others to follow. xD

**Please note this isn't up to date with the newest Homestuck updates. It was made before Jake and the other Alphas were introduced, and it will remain that way. Sorry for any disappointments. Not to mention Optimistics hasn't read anywhere passed their release either because she's a lazy fuck.**

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><p>== Reflect on definitive outcomes due to antecedent happenings<p>

Your name is Dave Strider, and tonight just happens to be the beginning of something really excellent.

Or rather, put into your own words, events so disastrously sicknasty they would have the exaggerated heroes of Egbert's shitty movies irrationally cowering in their un-ironic otherwise meant to be badass black leather boots. You could spend the better of the night elucidating how ill it is into a sweet rap with your more than expensively new turn tables, but find yourself unconventionally occupied as of the moment. And that brings you to the point of your pretty fucking neat profession you've taken up.

You're a nineteen year old detective – hella great at that - working for the state police in Washington ever since you moved nearby to your friend, a decision exclusively made by all of your somewhat tolerable chums you met online a number of years ago. They'll never be as conveniently cool as you, but you're fine with that. And as much as you could pretentiously bombast how ironically bro-fucking-tastic you are, as previously declared you have higher priorities that need your curtailed attention. What eludes your constant thoughtfulness however is the unsightly scene planted before your shaded eyes. It's enough to make your cohorts fall to their knees and bring up their still digesting dinner. But given enough experience and unprecedented levelheadedness, you're just fine… mostly. What has you on your toes are the two in the middle of all this.

Ever since a series of unfortunate events occurred due to playing the beta of a new (totally lame) game called SBURB, you and your friends became adolescent gods and met some unruly trolls. Yeah, it sounds uncanny but you actually met real fucking aliens who reproduce using buckets or some shit. Anyway, through the completion of said game and a number of humiliating bereavements in the past, you and your friends along with the grey skinned trolls, returned to Earth, which turned out to be completely fine and not utterly destroyed by meteorites. So 10 points to the game developers for that complete misapprehension on everyone's part. But if anyone asks, you knew all along. Upon return to old life with yet abundant modifications, you and your now voluminous amount of chums have kept in touch, where humans now daintily live with trolls. How? You don't know, nor do you take the time to find out.

Wait, bro. You're getting off track again.

Other than feeling the insufferable need to blatantly squeal and vomit on a nearby police car, you can't put your finger on why this happened. Given the heavy rain washing away the crime scene, it's becoming increasingly hard to tell what the _picture _actually is. And with midnight fast approaching your sense of vision is clouded by darkness, given _some _light by the portable lights placed around you. But what kind of asshole wears shades at night?

Pooling at your feet is the thick mix of both mud brown and indigo blood. Troll blood. It leaves a trail where your concealed eyes wonder, slowly discovering the mangled bodies of both Tavros Nitram and Eridan Empora. Both trolls and somewhat friends you came across years back. Both corpses that prick at the inside of your chest now that you see them dead; lifeless. _Not coming back._ You maintain your façade throughout the astonishment however, and deliberately drag your feet to the bodies that hastily requisite your attention before any fragment of substantiation disappears.

Tilting down your more than ironic detective fedora to protect your eyes from the rain, you notice up close just how gruesome a spectacle this is.

Like really bad.

"What kind of sick fuck…?"

You hear the accustomed, husky voice of a male standing behind you. He's no doubt unsteady by the sound of his trembling tone. But then again, you can barely keep your composure too. You don't dare turn around like a flabbergasted dork that was unsuspecting or their arrival, and instead keep your eye trained on the bodies of the trolls. Karkat Vantas, a high strung, yet exceedingly misconstrued troll police officer who was remarkably enthused by your pronouncement to become part of the police force.

"What kind of _insane mudgrubber_..." it seems he can't varnish his repeated words, and you hear a thick swallow at the back of his throat shadowing his words. It was to be expected. After all… some kind of monster has partially eaten his friends.

Raising your hand, you wordlessly motion for the mutant blood to come closer and examine the scene alongside you with a snide remark. You can't help being the insufferable prick you are, even at times like this. "Don't get your pants in a fucking knot, Vantas. We have work, man." Despite the fraught yearning to wrinkle your brows over this, you refrain from doing so and double check your medical gloves are equipped correctly. Equipped? You mean worn correctly. This isn't some game you're in. Not to mention you don't want troll blood getting on your new suit.

The bodies, priorly regarded as Tavros and Eridan, lie at your feet. Their eyes have humorously rolled to the back of their head, and are splaying out across the concrete, as if efficiently positioned on the spot. The sight is unnerving to your companion, but you dismiss his trepidation for the meanwhile and examine the scene more closely. A large, gaping hole enters the front of Tavros' chest, where you cautiously note his lungs have been forced out of his body, and ripped by the teeth of a human. Upon further examination you come to find a portion of his heart is missing as well, removed by the same method as the last. It's revolting to the point your nostrils are being filled with nothing but the stench of fresh blood of innumerable colours.

A loutish snarl reverberates from Karkat, and you can't find it in you to compose him.

"Karkat," a usually sheepish feminine tone joins in to the growing crowd, and you smirk at the remembrance. This time however you find no buoyancy in the shrill, instead sadness for the loss of remaining trolls. Because unlike the makers of SBURB, SGRUB didn't spare their planet. Terezi Pyrope, your blind _sidekick _in a way. She's a top-notch detective like you; cool like you and knows damn well how to flaunt it in front of the less cooler people around. You hear her gently pat Karkat's shoulder in comfort, but doesn't linger on the spot as she soon approaches your side closely.

"Ok Pyrope I'm going to tell you now not to lick anything here," you comment with a slick raise of your brow. A childish grin spreads across her lips, baring her hair-raising choppers to you. Jesus fucking Christ you'll never get over how peculiar that is. It's like a horny shark had mutant babies with a monkey or some shit. But moving on, she merely pulls off a sarcastic expression and turns her head to the smell of the crime. The rain is getting especially chilly, and you're not all that content with getting sick on the job. God or not, you're not immune to disease. That's right… you and your friends became gods in SBURB. But after completing the game you had the choice of locking away your abilities and living a normal life, or keeping them for the sake of god knows what idiocy. Sure your timey wimey clockwork was ironically as cool as you are, if not a little less, but you'd had your fill of that timeline bull and was ready to move on.

The one who kept theirs though? John Egbert. The bucktoothed dork you call your best friend and moved to Washington for. You're bros for life, with the best bromance that was ever declared by you alone.

You shake your head to rid of the very abrupt contemplations of your bud and again focus on the matter at hand. Tavros has been left without a portion of his heart and only half his lungs, along with a broken horn at that. But you always saw that coming. The only conspicuous amount of vehemence is his throat had been slit- no clawed out. Moving onto Eridan, he has perceptibly the same shaped marks raking his skin, up his arms and across his throat in a similar fashion.

A cane flashes across your sight and blocks your view, forcing you to perk your brow at your subordinate. "Really?"

Terezi's vibrant red eyes widen at the discovery of something, and she pushes out Eridan's limp arm to find three of his fingers have been bitten off. Karkat instantaneously holds his hand up to his mouth and encloses it, struggling to keep from gagging. If Tavros wasn't enough for him, they'd eaten part of the seadweller as well?

"Dammit, dammit!" The male yells in agitation and complete hysteric, "I'll find whoever did this and shove my gun up their pink skinned ass so far it'll work as makeshift-"

Karkat's words cut off as he eyes an object on the ground nearby to the scene, and hastily walks to its location. Instead of casually picking up it up, he clumsily takes a pair of medical gloves and puts them. After obtaining the supposed evidence, he breathes out in relief, an eye prominently convulsing in suite of his reaction. Covered in indigo blood slowly being washed away by the rain, is a broken glasses lens. On it is a single eyelash caught by the troll's finger, in which Karkat's stare mostly lingers with dumbfound. You and Terezi find it in yourselves to walk away from the bodies and stand to his side to see what he's found, and you're almost sure this could be the piece of evidence you're looking for.

This wasn't the first case of cannibalism on a troll. Feferi had been murdered in an identical way just a week ago, leaving her roommates Kanaya and Rose in shock of the situation. But it is clear now… very clear.

Someone is out to eradicate all the remaining trolls.


End file.
